Abstract: Crisis Management (CM) refers to the ability to deal with crisis tasks in different phases and iterations. People working in a crisis are generally under stress to make the right decision at the right time. They have to process large amounts of data and to assimilate the received information in an intuitive and visual way. Visual Analytics (VA) is potentially useful to analyze and understand the huge amount of data in several areas including in a crisis. We designed a survey protocol to understand which themes influence visualizations to support CM. In previous work, we carried out systematic mapping studies, analysis of official documents, ethnographic studies, questionnaires during the large events held in Brazil in recent years. In this work, we interviewed eight CM specialists. We analyzed this data qualitatively with the coding technique. Then we evaluated the coding results with the focus group technique. With the results, we identified the relationships between the visual needs and other main themes of influence for CM. This thematic synthesis enabled us to build a draft model based on VA.
We hope that, after future cycles of validations and improvements, the agencies that manage crises might use this model as a reference in their activities of knowledge production and decision-making.